Businesses that fail to nurture their leads are almost certainly wasting marketing budget, especially for businesses with long sales cycles. As Ramel Levin, VP of Marketing at CloudEndure notes, 75% of leads will not convert immediately and need to be nurtured.

This is just one of the insights from “#B2BTalks: Lead Generation vs. Lead Nurturing.” In this post, we’ll help you gain a better understanding of why lead nurturing is so important, and how to implement lead nurturing practices in your business.

Levin suggests that based on his experience, only a third of leads will eventually convert into sales for the business. The most important thing when nurturing a lead is to remind your prospect that you exist, and the most effective way is through email. Roy Man, founder and CEO of daPulse, points out that even huge companies like Facebook find that email is the most effective tool for customer retention.

Key Challenges In An Attention Scarce Environment

Businesses need to constantly engage with prospects and leads. However, this can create significant challenges in creating content, as uninteresting content can make people unsubscribe or even worse, mark your emails as spam.

One example of a company which has successfully overcome this challenge is Oktopost. They are creating what are called “customer webinars,” where they address specific problems that customers in their database are having. This helps both the customer attending the webinar, as well as other customers in their database. To announce upcoming customer webinars, Oktopost sends a branded email to their database, highlighting the real challenges that their customers are facing.

Roy Man points out that people are signing up for so many apps these days, so it is essential to email leads during the first few weeks following sign up to spur interest. For example, email marketing company Mad Mimi explains to new subscribers that they will receive a seven-part email series delivered over a specific time period. By being upfront and telling them exactly what to expect, new leads are less likely to unsubscribe.

Branded vs. Plain Text Emails

As we mentioned above, email remains to be the most effective channel in reminding prospects that you exist. Because you have the ability to push a highly customized message directly into people’s inboxes, careful thought must be applied when doing so.

First, businesses need to decide whether to use a branded email or plain text. Roy Man suggests that for businesses that send email frequently, a branded corporate email works best. This is because it can reduce unsubscribe rates, as people will still choose to receive email communications (provided they like the company), even if they don’t like a given individual email. Kfir Pravda (our CEO) has a different approach, suggesting that for businesses with a smaller list, the personalized touch of a plain text email is more effective.

By taking a strategic, long-term view of lead nurturing, combined with some of the specific email tactics above, businesses should be able to experience a significant increase in conversions.

Watch the video below to hear more lead nurturing tips from our #B2BTalks panel. To sign up for #B2BTalks updates, simply click here.